Thursday, December 22, 2016

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Christmas At Ground Zero” is
penultimate on Dr. Demento Presents the
Greatest Novelty Records of All-Time Vol. VI: Christmas (1985) and ultimate
on Polka Party (1986), the nadir of
Al’s commercial success. I don’t know on which I first heard the song, but my
father is certainly responsible, as he bought both LPs. He didn’t like the
song. At the time I assumed he found it sacrilegious, but in retrospect I
realize what troubled him was the song’s manic despair.

“Everywhere the atom bombs are dropping / it’s the
end of all humanity / no more time for last-minute shopping / it’s time to face
your final destiny”

I like the song. It’s better than Al’s “The Night
Santa Went Crazy” (1996), in which Santa Claus goes postal in the North Pole—this
sounds stupid, but among its other weaknesses, “The Night Santa Went Crazy”
lacks depth.“It’s Christmas at ground zero / just seconds left
to go / I’ll duck and cover / with my yuletide lover / underneath the
mistletoe”

The reference to “duck and cover,” to the
emergency broadcast “that let us know / that this is not a test,” the inclusion
of a Christmas message from Ronald Reagan (“Well, the big day’s only a few
hours away now, I’m sure you’re all looking forward to it as much as we are”),
and the air-raid siren that finishes the track grounds the song in political
reality. “Christmas At Ground Zero” is punk rock.

As a kid, anxiety about the bomb seemed a concern
of the past. Mention of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative—“Star Wars”—only
irksome because it wasn’t about the real Star
Wars. A little older, I worried more about the “hole” in the ozone layer.
Gradually, I discovered I was anxious about the bomb, but it was a familiar
anxiety, low-grade, constant, maintained by news of plutonium 239 smuggled out
of a collapsed U.S.S.R., of North Korean missile tests, of Iran’s nuclear
program, etc. Now, our commander-in-chief-elect Trump.

My father is not easily shocked. Maybe
“Christmas At Ground Zero” was too flip for a man who watched “Duck and Cover” as
a school boy, or who followed the news as Kennedy blundered through the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Maybe it just troubled him to see me, at 10, blithely bopping
my head to a song so utterly nihilistic.